


hide it, my heart

by fmo



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, can be interpreted as friendship or romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1611947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fmo/pseuds/fmo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter Soldier meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.</p><p>Or: the first time they erased everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hide it, my heart

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [[授权翻译][盾冬/冬盾无差]Hide it, My Heart 厚实的伪装把它藏在我的心中](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774531) by [SummerNap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SummerNap/pseuds/SummerNap)



Bucky grabs Steve’s arm, pulls him away from the rest of the Commandos as Morita secures the zip lines and Gabe settles the radio on the snow.

“Bucky, what—” Steve says, the wind ruffling his hair. His eyebrows draw together a little in concern.

“They’re trying to take you,” Bucky says, desperate, grip getting tighter on Steve’s arm.

Guileless, Steve looks back at the Commandos, who are still setting up for the op at the edge of the precipice.

“We have to—” Bucky says—

A distant tremble in the air, a low rumble like a heartbeat from the mountain, and then—snow falls, the mountain slides down—

Avalanche. White, snowfall, the memory is—

*

Steve will come into the bar in about a minute, so Bucky pushes his way out through the tipsy throngs to meet him outside in the street instead. This time, he doesn't waste a second, just catches hold of Steve and says, “Follow me.”

Steve follows, of course, striding along at Bucky’s side. “What’s going on?” Steve says, leaning close to say the words low into Bucky’s ear, as though he thinks they have a tail.

“They’re trying to take you.” Bucky risks a glance behind them.

“Who—“ Steve says, but Bucky shakes his head.

“We have to—hide you, or something—“ Bucky says, putting his hand on Steve’s back to make him go faster. He looks around for a safe place—maybe a bombed-out house? And then he realizes there’s no safe place here, they’ll have to go—

“Fast, come on!” Bucky pulls Steve around a corner and into the past, just as the air raid sirens start wailing and the street that they were in crumbles.

*

“What’s this?” Steve says, hesitating for the first time.

It’s not the night-time of blacked-out Blitz London any more. It’s the low light of evening outside even the muffled lights of a city, not cold but chilly and rainy and muddy. They’re in a field among American soldiers and a few tanks, the soldiers mostly leaning against the tanks.

“This was before you came,” Bucky says. Before Steve came, when suddenly Bucky Barnes, beloved boy of Brooklyn, was nobody very important among hundreds of men just as good as him. “We were pushing north in Italy.”

Steve looks around; his olive dress uniform and his hair are getting wet fast in the rain. “Bucky, who are we running from?” he says, setting his jaw and squaring his shoulders as though a Hydra goon is going to pop up in front of them. “’Cause I—“

The memory isn’t vanishing. Yet. Maybe it’s safe. Bucky isn’t sure; it’s hard to tell if the rain is still falling out there in the east, away from the sunset. “Steve, _listen to me_ ,” he says. “We _can’t fight them_. All you can do is hide. Go in a memory where you don’t belong, but I—I don’t know how much they’re gonna take. I don’t know where is safe.”

“Okay,” Steve says, nodding, although he doesn’t understand and Bucky is pretty sure he’s not really agreeing to run. Then he says, “Buck? The sky—“

The sunset is growing darker, too fast, like the color is seeping out of the memory—

“Oh, shit. Fuck,” Bucky says. They turn and run from the edge of the fading moment.

*

Coming up to the Expo, the big metal globe overhead. There’s always a faint feeling of sadness on the outskirts of a carnival or a festival, like seeing a party from outside.

For once, it’s warm.

“Go,” Bucky says at once, even as he’s still taking in the sight of Steve, out of place here and tall in his rain-darkened uniform. “Pretend like I don’t know you.”

Steve shakes his head; Bucky can’t look in his eyes. “There’s no other—?”

“Go!” Bucky starts to stride away, and Steve is consumed by the incoming masses, just another person in a sea of people.

But he knows Steve is watching him go, just standing there, he knows, he knows, and—

*

Coney Island. Evening again, again all bright lights and fried food smells but this time there’s the faintly rank smell of the seashore. Among the crowd, nobody notices Steve (still big, but now wearing that old tan jacket he always used to wear everywhere) holding onto Bucky.

“Bucky. What’s happening to the places we leave?”

“What?” Bucky says. He swallows. He doesn’t know exactly what places they’ve left.

“Bucky,” Steve says, gripping Bucky’s shoulder. “Bucky? Who are they?”

Bucky thinks he knows, but then he—isn’t sure. “You’re not real,” he says instead. It’s true. The Steve standing here on the pier, wearing the jacket that should be ten sizes too small, isn’t really Steve. But he looks real, his hair falling out of the way he combed it this morning, the worn cotton of the jacket and this is all the Steve Bucky has left.

Steve is about to say something, but then a firework explodes and the memory shatters in a bang and falling light.

*

Steve is shaving in the bathroom. Bucky feels like he ought to be thinking that Steve looks different, or that Steve should look different, but how could Steve look different and still look like Steve? That doesn’t make sense.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve says, tilting his head to shave the corner of his jaw that he can’t really see.

Bucky remembers the one thing he was supposed to say. “You have to hide,” he says, taking Steve by the wrist and physically shoving him out into the hallway.

“Bucky, what the—” Steve says, halfway between furious and baffled, traces of shaving foam still all over his jaw. He’s only wearing his undershirt, too.

“Pretend like you don’t live here,” Bucky says, and shuts the door in his face. If Steve is just a neighbor, not that important, then maybe Steve won’t be—

Won’t be?

*

A spring day. A funeral.

Bucky has his arm around someone’s shoulders, and he isn’t sure who but he knows it’s important.

Flowers smell sweet.

There’s something he’s supposed to do, or say, but it’s not coming to his mind.

*

Ordinary day in school. Math.

There was something Bucky was supposed to do. Something important. Something important, and it’s almost there, and he feels—

*

There was something. 

*

Sometimes a reflection, a picture, in a book, a movie, a stranger on the road . . .

They look like someone he once saw on a street, or behind a counter. Just somebody he once saw, out of the corner of his eye. It’s not important. But. 

Strange for so many strangers to look just a little the same.

But the information’s not essential.

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh I think this is the most needlessly cruel and angst-inducing thing I've ever written! 
> 
> Title is from "Eloisa to Abelard," the same poem the "eternal sunshine" line is from.
> 
> Please comment though, I love to get my little comments from you : 3
> 
> Come say hi to me at fmowrites.tumblr.com, and if you found this fic through a rec, please tell me! I love to hear about being recced.


End file.
